Significance Of The Monroe Doctrine

The 1820s marked the beginning of a new found sense of national pride and self confidence that carried the United States through the nineteenth century. During this period of time, everyday Americans started to disregard the insignificance that many European powers had placed on the United States on the world stage and pushed their democratic republican views into the march of improvement, an echoing new idea in Western culture. What might have been interpreted elsewhere as tediously irritating, it elevated a new goal for mankind. Invoked by the fear of European takeover in the Americas, the foundation of the Monroe Doctrine set up the United States’ hundred year period of isolation from European activity creating new exchanges and opportunities

This address set forth an American written policy on European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, and would soon become one of the foundations of United States policy in Latin America (Allison). President James Monroe made this declaration in his seventh annual address to the Congress of the United States on December 2, 1823. The Monroe Doctrine affirmed the two main policies of non-colonization and non-intervention (Monroe). These notable declarations asserted that European nations could no longer colonize the American continents, and that they should not interfere with the newly independent Spanish American republics (Bolivar). Monroe specifically warned European powers against attempting to impose a monarchy on independent American nations but added that the United States would not interfere in existing European colonies or in Europe itself (Monroe). Previous presidents, especially Thomas Jefferson, had vaguely hinted at these practices influencing Monroe’s decision (Jefferson). By separating Europe from American nations, Monroe was trying to preserve the existence of a distinct Western Hemisphere, and more specifically the United States’ interests in it (Monroe to Jefferson). He opposed the European political system of monarchy believing that no American nation should adopt it, and felt that its presence anywhere in the Western Hemisphere endangered the peace and safety of the still young United States. He also believed that the United States, alone, should complete the colonization of North America and that European nations in North American would restrict it (Erikson). Despite his strong assertions, however, Monroe did not suggest any means to assure the policy, and he knew the United States could not ensure it alone, so the debate of rallying for British support became a great debate Monroe’s